The present application relates to communication services that are designed to help businesses communicate with their customers.
Presently, when a business wishes to send communications to its customers, it is often necessary for the business to use multiple different communication channels to reach all of their customers. For example, customers who only possess an analog telephone can only be reached via an audio telephone call. Other customers who have a smartphone can be reached by an audio telephone call, but also via a SMS or MMS “text” message. Still other customers may only be reachable via an email communication.
When a business must use multiple different communication channels to reach its customers, the business is often forced to create messages in multiple different formats, and to then send the different formatted messages via corresponding communication channels. The situation becomes even more complex when the business must deliver such messages to customers in a wide variety of different markets or countries. When messages are to be delivered in multiple different countries, different languages are often used. In addition, the format and delivery requirements for audio communications, text messages and email messages can vary from country to country, with each different location using a different standard.
It would desirable for a business to utilize the services of a third party that can facilitate the delivery of communications to the business' customers. The third party could receive a message which a business wishes to disseminate to its customers, and the third party could handle the formatting and delivery of the message via the most appropriate communication channels. This would relieve the business of the need to develop and maintain expertise on the requirements of the various communication channels, freeing the business to concentrate on its core mission.
Another problem facing a business that provides its customers with access to customer service agents relates to how customer calls to those service agents are recorded. During a typical customer call to a service agent, it is common for the customer to be transferred from a first service agent to a second agent. When the customer's call is recorded by the business, this usually results in two separate recordings, a first recording of the customer's interaction with the first service agent and a second recording of the customer's interaction with the second service agent. Those two separate recordings must then be associated with one another in some fashion in order to preserve an accurate representation of the customer's interactions with the business' service agents.
It would be desirable for the business to create a single continuous recording which includes all of the customer's interactions with all of the business's service agents. This simplifies the recording process and simplifies the steps which are later necessary to re-create the customer's experience in interacting with the business' service agents.